Date: Wed, 6 May 1998 09:52:51 -0400 (EDT) From: Sophia C Vackimes 1/ Conference Presentation 2/ Full research paper --------------------- Conference Presentation ---------------- Wall Street Enshrined Sophia Vackimes Religious thinking in modern societies appears imbedded with the signs of the era in which it is manifest. In a time like today, when commercial interests are overtly ,dominant we have to look at such interests to find out how they are played out as religious beliefs. The Wall Street area is a heavily visited out how they are played out as religious space which can be considered a contemporary ritual destination. The Wall Street area is a heavily visited space which can be considered a contemporary ritual destination. Rites of passage are activities which mark important life stages during which the sacred is made evident. Like weddings, initiation rites, or death ceremonies, pilgrimages are a sacred activity which involve acts carried out towards a being of ultimate value. The presence of a supreme being is sought and induced here. The experience the traveller seeks is the revelation of immensity, terror and majesty which connect man with the transcendent. A religious site is constituted both by visitors and by the shrine holders through conscious and unconscious processes. By unconscious I don't mean void of meaning, but symbolic processes recurring with regularity in a society. They are not random representations. (1) In order for a site to become religious and for travelling to be religious specific imaginative processes have to be set in motion. Breaking its construction up into naming, framing, enshrinement, consecration, and mechanical reproduction as suggested by MacCannell aids in understanding the sacred nature that Wall Street has. These processes feed from each other and are not linear on a space or time continuum. They involve suspension of disbelief.(2) Naming is the recognition of the importance of the space. There is simple naming; Wall Street, phrases like "the heart of the world," or "the most expensive land on the planet." Then, there is complex naming, which introduces narratives of sacred deeds. Rags to riches stories are accounts of human beings imitating the pattern of the hero where J.P. Morgan's life path symbolically follows the contours of the lives of Jason, Hercules, Jesus, etc. These lives are ahistorical and therefore unaccountable to society. Framing is the demarcation of space as sacred. The skyscrapers in this area were built in quick succession to be the tallest structure in the world. They are aspirations to reach the sky. Battles among the Wall Street heroes took place in order to establish them. Ziggurats, Greek temples, mausoleums, and Egyptian pyramids crown the structures. Within the surrounding skyscrapers the chaotic crossroads of the area become the "center of the world where the sun falls perpendicularly from heaven." A very precise prerequisite for sacred space. Enshrinement is the use of space for ritual purposes. Initiates must depart from their places of origin, be incorporated into a group of novices, act out a ritual of creation, experience the sacred, and be again incorporated into society. At Wall Street the ritual consists of immersion into a view of trading floor's total chaos; the moment before creation, exposure to the sacred; ultimate value and exposure to the organizing principles of the universe; the visit to the Federal Reserve's rooms full of gold bullion behind bars. (3) Now the last step to sacralize a site which as MacCannell notes is Mechanical Reproduction; the production of facsimiles. However, if tourism sought facsimiles, the experience would not be religious. Visitors must travel to experience the real thing. (4) Mechanical reproduction at Wall Street prevents such from happening. The sacred is intensely mediated. Gold, the ultimate value in our society lies as bullion behind bars, as coinage, as paper money, as shredded paper, as flickering lights, and even as a free floating gold bullion hologram. Foucault wrote in The Value of Things that the representational shifts in of value/sacredness occur according during history. These processes are not accidental. The elision of the real object here is an example of what Taussig calls the "repeated violence of the dissolution of limits of representation." That pilgrims collaborate in this exercise of commodity fetishism is an effect of metaphysical converse of consciousness also known as ideological control. This is a social rather than an individual phenomenon clearly related in the following phrase: The worker exchanges with capital his labor itself. . . he alienates it. The price he receives is the value of this alienation. Karl Marx. Thank you. ------------------------- RESEARCH PAPER ------------------------------ THE WORLD PUTS ITS STOCK IN US: INTEGRITY PROTECTING THE WORKS OF MEN Sophia Vackimes "INTEGRITY PROTECTING THE WORKS OF MEN" Religious thinking in modern societies appears imbedded with the signs of the era in which it is manifest; the conventions that make it up are sui generis. In any given society, the "operation of imaginative processes recurring with the evident regularity of mental law. . . take their place among well-marked and consistent structures of the human mind (Segal, 1990:i)." In a time like today, when commercial interests are manifestly dominant in our society we have to look at commercial interests to find how they are manifest in religious beliefs and actions and how they transform them. "Integrity Protecting the Works of Men," is the title of the allegorical sculptural frieze above the main entrance to the New York Stock Exchange on Broad Street in New York City. This building is one of several which make up the Wall Street business district in lower Manhattan. On any given day hundreds of tourists flock into this area individually or in tours in order to visit one or more of the sites that are found in this historic area. The Stock Exchange, Trinity Church, J.P. Morgan's office building, the Federal Reserve Bank, and many other sites, icons, street names etc., together are said to exemplify the collective labor that produces the riches traded in this area. Construction of a Mystique This "financial heart (WPA:84)" is a complex mechanism developed to provide the American nation and the rest of the world with "centralized banking and credit facilities and the efficient securities market that modern industry and commerce demand (Idem)." How it developed into this powerful tool of capitalism is clearly articulated in many written guides and tours of the area. The story of its origins as a fur trading post, the lives of American men who amassed great fortunes at the turn of the century and its importance in modern commerce are part of the story told here. These three main elements are the staple stories of any local tour. A morning's visit throughout the area reveals a myriad of curious details, which amalgamated create the narrative esthetics of this commercial district. Tour after tour, and guide after guide visitors are taken through history and a bit of financial anecdotes in order to attempt an explanation of this complex touristic site. However, it is not a site that is largely advertised. It is unlike many tourist destinations in the city of New York for it does not offer much visual attraction, or opportunities for tourists to have fun. If the tourist experience is a collective striving for a transcendence of the modern totality (MacCannell, 1989:50), what is this transcendence for Wall Street? The area is composed of a series of buildings, objects, banners, labels and human activities which work as a whole to create an iconographic totality which can be viewed and analyzed in the same manner that carefully designed museum exhibits are. Public spaces which act as tourist attractions contain a matrix which assures that the social structure that is recomposed via the tour, while always partial, is nevertheless not a skewed or warped representation of reality. Once on tour, only the individual imagination can modify reality, and so long as the faculty of imagination is at rest, society appears such as it is (Idem. 51-52). Research Method The main objective of my research will be to identify and analyze the structural/physical elements that make up the Wall Street "matrix." That is, discover what makes this destination appear as a whole to the tourists visiting it, and what it is that draws tourists to visit it. In order to limit the scope of the project I have selected a walking visit given by Heritage Trails, which is one among many local companies which cater to tourist groups. This not for profit organization's approach to tourism is perhaps more informed than other run of the mill visits; its intention is not to quickly shuffle visitors through the area but to engage them in the comprehension of the site as a whole. The main purpose of the organization is educational. Its tour guides are all graduate students from very well known universities who utilize their expert knowledge on American History to give an academic approach to sites which otherwise would be guided in a mass consumption manner. The sites then, are visited in a fairly relaxed manner; the guides are not "professional guides" but Ivy League graduates which are chosen because of the special expertise they can convey to the visitor. The groups are small, with 10-15 people per visit. The organization tries to provide additional perks to the visit which often complements different interests the public might have. The sites visited are the same as those visited by any other company that works the area, however, the visits are subject to minor changes according to site availability, special reserved events, and visits to non-public areas. The tour is also supplemented by printed documents which the guide passes around to the visitors which include The American Constitution, and historical illustrations of sites. 18th and 19th century drawings of local buildings, and newspaper clippings for historic events are passed around among visitors to complement talks. There is also the option of following the tour without being part of a group. This is done by picking up a brochure at a distribution center and walking a prescribed path marked with labels on street sidewalks. As a touristic destination the Wall Street District it is quite different from other touristic sites where the main purpose is mere distraction or recreation. It is a stark environment upon which a narrative is crafted with a specific purpose and style framed in terms of work, integrity, and national unity. The history told about it by guides, written about it in books and brochures, and recreated in the visitor's minds exemplifies what is generally understood as progress. However, it is upon close inspection that the discrepancies in this unified discourse begin to appear. Before engaging in a full blown discussion of the site and the meanings of its diverse elements I will briefly describe a visit as done every Friday morning. This tour is mainly organized around the visits to several buildings that make up the Wall Street District. Each one of them acts as a station where different narratives are engaged in. The visit is done by foot, and covers an area of about one half square mile, and takes approximately three and a half hours to complete. The following walk-through will include quotations from the Heritage Trails brochures exclusively. Promenade The Wall Street District is an agglomeration of buildings, streets and markers surrounding the New York Stock Exchange. It comprises many of the city's early skyscrapers, banks and financial institutions, streets, a church, plaques and statues. One of the common features shared by all buildings is their uniformity in architectural terms; most faades are of Neo-classic style, and bear no markings of the institutions they house. They are made of gray granite and are generally unadorned, a few of them though, have stone carvings on their portals or faades that note their relationship to mercantile enterprises. The streets are irregularly traced and bear the outlines of accumulated historical epochs; Wall Street takes its names from the outpost limits of the city in the 18th century; Broadway street used to be an old Indian trail reaching as far as Albany, NY, the cobbles are reminders of city development of the 19th century. * The meeting place and beginning of the tour is set at the Federal Hall National Memorial on 26 Wall Street. This building is "named for the original Federal Hall, perhaps the most historic site in the entire country, where Congress first met when New York was the nation's first capital. . . originally built as the city's Custom House in the 1839's. . . today, Federal Hall serves as a museum operated by the National Park Service." This building bears on its front steps a statue of George Washington, the nation's first president. His inauguration occurred here in 1789 at the end of the Revolutionary War. It is considered "perhaps the most historic site in the entire country." The statue's back is toward the building and is facing the Stock Exchange a scant hundred yards away. The building has a rotunda that now houses tourist information booths. "Its Pantheon-like dome brings to mind the economic poser of the Roman empire. . . its row of columns suggests a reverence for Greek democracy--a thoroughly mixed message about 19th century American ideals." * New York Stock Exchange, 8-18 Broad Street; "brokers have been trading shares on Wall Street since 1792. . . their descendants operating as the New York Stock Exchange, opened on the current site in 1865 and in 1903 built this new home. . . behind the columns is the frenzied trading floor, where approximately eleven billion dollars' worth of financial instruments change hands every day.. . . J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated, 23 Wall Street." This is a building with another Roman style faade which reads "Integrity Protecting the Works of Man," on the pediment. An American and several Stock Exchange flags fly on its front. The Stock Exchange has a small exhibition gallery with demonstrations on the functions of the exchange. It also contains a lounge overlooking the trading floor and a small tourist shop. * J.P. Morgan & Co. Incorporated. 23 Wall Street. "The House of Morgan." American J. Pierpont Morgan, the capitalist's capitalist founded the bank in 1861 when he was just twenty- three. . . With skyscrapers rising on all sides, and land values skyrocketing, Morgan displayed its fabulous wealth by building its headquarters only four stories high. . . Luxurious but unmarked, like a prestigious private club." No tourist entry. * Skyscraper on 1 Wall Street. . . here on the world's most expensive corner--Wall Street and Broadway--the Irving Trust Company towers over Trinity Church. . . [the building is] not the typical sheet of glass hanging from a steel cage, but a brick wall rippling like a curtain descending on the Broadway stage. Art Deco decoration. No tourist entry. * Skyscraper 14 Wall Street, sharing the intersection of Wall and Broad streets with Federal Hall, Morgan Guaranty Trust and the New York Stock Exchange, Bankers Trust erected a tall classical tower topped by, of all things, a "stepped pyramid modeled after the Greek Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. . . the steps of the pyramid can't be seen from the sidewalk. . . instantly recognizable element in the Downtown skyline." No tourist entry. * 40 Wall Street. "Enormously tall skyscrapers on narrow Downtown streets can't really be seen from close up; instead, like this one. . . they're best appreciated from a distance--in the majestic skyline of Downtown. The Bank of Manhattan engaged in one of the famous 1920's rivalries for the title of 'World's Tallest Building.'" * 48 Wall Street. "Enormously tall skyscrapers on narrow Downtown streets can't really be seen from close up. . .You can see the power of history and tradition shaping a modern, late 1920's skyscraper. The Bank of New York is the city's oldest, founded by Alexander Hamilton himself in 1784, on this very site. . . its main Colonial detail is meant to be seen from a distance. . . if you climb the circular staircase to the main banking hall you will find eight murals showing the development of New York commerce over the centuries. * 70 Pine Street. When the Cities Service oil company built its new tower on pine Street in 1932, the company's officers didn't want to part with the prestige of their old Wall Street address--so they maintained a link with their old building via bridge and underground passage in order to use the address "60 Wall Tower." . . the best, though is inside--a vast lobby of Deco delights. . . The tower is next to impossible to see--but you can admire an enormous scale model of it, mounted over the main entrance. . . all kinds of wonderful stylized floral and geometric forms. * 20 Exchange Place. "Yet another 1920's skyscraper that hoped to be the world's tallest, the City Bank-Farmers Trust Company tower became one of the great spires of the Downtown skyline . . . you will notice that while the base is oddly shaped the tower is perfectly regular. . . the entrance on Exchange Place, laden with the symbolism of finance and commerce, is ringed with 11 enormous portraits of coins from the countries in which the bank had offices, including a beautiful 1930 nickel at the lower left. Look to your left, at the next building and you will see representations of ancient coins, too. . . what more appropriate symbol here than money?" * 55 Wall Street. "Merchants Exchange, built to replace an older version that had burned to the ground in the Great Fire of 1835. . . survives because of the enlightened policy of the national City Bank. The Bank bought the building in 1907 for its prestige and location. Under renovation. No access. * Hanover Square. . . whose history as a public space dates back to the first years of the Dutch settlement. Daytime access. * Trinity Church. Broadway at Wall Street. "Back in the 1840's when it was the tallest building in New York, this handsome, spired church, framed in the famous vista of Wall Street at Broadway rose well above the financial powerhouses of "The Street." . . . Outside walk through the cemetery, a Who's Who of old New York, including first Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton." Public access. * Federal Reserve Bank. 33 Liberty Street. "Deep inside the Federal Reserve Bank sits over one quarter of the world's entire known reserves of gold bullion. These tens of billions of dollars' worth of gold bars, each numbered and weighed, are stored five stories underground." The visit consists of a pre-arranged escorted tour for small groups, view of a vault full of gold, and a visit to a small museum. This museum cannot be viewed in isolation to the tour. Magic, Science and Religion Revisited Anthropology has traditionally focused on the study of rites of passage; birth, marriage, initiation, pregnancy and childbirth rites of non Western peoples. These practices, as documented in classic ethnographies or modern ethnographies consistently single out religious behavior as a practice worthy of study in peasant societies. However, the religious quality of human behavior is an aspect of all cultures; it is an integral part of human thinking. From Malinowski's studies we know that magic, science and religion are activities which are not separate from each other; they draw from one another and they coexist. Magical, religious or scientific thought appear in what we see as exotic societies as much as they do in "modern," "secular," or "advanced" ones: magic and religion are not merely a doctrine or a philosophy, not merely an intellectual body of opinion, but a special mode of behavior, a pragmatic attitude built up of reason, feeling, and will alike. It is a mode of action as well as a system of belief, and a sociological phenomenon as well as a personal experience (Malinowski, 1954:24). Seeking the Transcendent Besides the rites of passage noted above, pilgrimage is also a ritualized activity (Gennep, 1969:182), and tourism is its modern day equivalent. In fact, it might be "its replacement (MacCannell, 1989:43)." The reasons for engaging in either one are the need to come into contact with the sacred. Pilgrims or tourist seeks "a perfunctory, conventionalized act through which they can portray respect and regard to some object of ultimate value (Goffman qtd. in MacCannel, 1989:43)." The revelation of the presence of the supreme being through what is specifically and peculiarly God's, majesty of the celestial immensity, and the terror it infuses, leads man to experiences epiphany (Eliade, 1987:121). By attaining intimate connection with the sacred man's life becomes transcendent. Tourist attractions are not merely a collection of random material representations. When they appear in itineraries, they have a moral claim on the tourist, at the same time, they tend toward universality, incorporating natural, social, historical and cultural domains in a single representation made possible by the tour (MacCannell, 1989:45). These sites consist of a set of interactions between a place, a narrative and attitudes displayed towards them by their keepers and their visitors. Enshrinement stages Sacralization of a space is a human attempt to establish order where chaos reigns. It emulates creation and therefore must be done only by Gods and requires its own paradigmatic model (Eliade, 1987:3). The model for this site is obviously economical; money reigns superior to any other value so that the stories told about it, the signs connected with it, its illustrations, the actions of people within it all correspond to the model. Using this space in pilgrimage manner presupposes an existential choice (Idem:31) which is made even by those who come to it once in their lives. "I finally made it," was a comment uttered during a tour. "I worked all my life as a trader, I retired, and now I finally made it," are comments which indicate the importance of this choice. One comes here to see "what you have never imagined (HT:viii)." Naming Naming is the symbolic selection of a site (Eliade, 1987:45). The ritualization of naming is myth narration, and oral repetition. The New York Stock Exchange is without doubt one of the most powerful loci of capitalistic enterprise. In one day of operation over one "eleven billion dollars worth of financial instruments change hands every day." It is, our brochure tells us, "the international temple of finance." The top companies in the world trade here and we are given to read a list with the names of the top thirty trading companies to prove so. The origins of this great economic magnet are set in mythical terms. During a tour, the sidewalk outside 8-18 Broad Street one is told by different guides was an old buttonwood tree. This tree is the origin point of the Wall Street myth, part of the great myth of capitalism, development, progress, and social wellbeing. A trading post under a tree in an idyllic Dutch colony was a willow tree under which merchants traded pelts here at a time long ago. Thus the creation myth narrative begins with a powerful image which is a common biblical reference to Paradise; long long ago, in a time "which is not really true (TG)" Under this tree one is told it all began. The narration of the primal tree story symbolizes "being put to death on a symbol of life (Dundes, 1990:207);" and the resurrection re-enactment which will be played out during the tour. The J.P. Morgan building is the next site to be named. Its story is linked yet to another type of narration; the legend. The legend as a genre brings us closer in time to the magical for legends are about the lives of real human beings which accomplished fantastic feats. The role of the tour guide is to tell and refresh our memories about their acts "man could not know their acts if they were not revealed to him (Eliade, 1987:95);" the guide becomes a mediator between reality and sacred history, to "make a God of money and the man (Twain qtd. in Litwak, 1991:534)". The fantastic stories of the Wall Street multimillionaire evolving from rags to riches follows those of Horatio Alger; stories which preached the ideals of the self made man which were common reading for American children the nineteenth century; stories which closely parallel the myth of the hero. The origin of a place or institution, and the markers of the lives of self made tycoons are abundant in this area giving it an aura of sacredness. Inside of the NYSE gallery images of happy people of all races remind us of how where everyone can be an investor just like them. 48 Wall Street houses the city's oldest banking institution; the Bank of New York, founded by Alexander Hamilton himself in 1784. . ."and if you don't believe this . . . you can read its story in the various plaques attached to the building (TG)." Arch rivalries among powerful men are translated into battles among towering buildings. 40 Wall Street "engaged in one of the rivalries for the title of "World's Tallest Building (HT)," but lost to an "arch rival [who] had secretly hoisted through its roof a five-part spire (HT)" Most faades take elements from temples of antiquity, and are referred to in grandiose terms. Federal Hall is a "new American bank pretending to be old Greek temple (HT)," with a "Pantheon-like dome. . . [illustrating the] power of the Roman empire (HT)." The New York Stock exchange has a Neo-classical faade with a pediment decorated with Greek style sculptures. J.P. Morgan & Co. is "luxurious but unmarked (HT)." And while 1 Wall Street is referred to in the guide book as "the world's most expensive corner (HT)," 14 Wall Street is topped with "a stepped pyramid modeled after the Greek Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world . . . a 2400 old tomb (HT)." 70 Pine Street has a tower which "is next to impossible to see [and displays] the company's pyramid logo (HT);" 20 Exchange Place is decorated with ancient coins. Framing The next step, framing, (MacCannell, 1989:45) and the naming of a site are not entirely separate acts. Much of the description of the buildings from the brochures and the guide's explanations define the area mentally, however, physical markers are clear boundaries for it. Delimitation is a complex conscious/unconscious process. Men are not free to choose the sacred site. . . they only seek for it and find it by the help of mysterious signs (Eliade, 1987:28). Sacred space is a break from the surrounding cosmic milieu which makes it qualitatively different (Idem:26). Holy sites and sanctuaries are believed to be situated at the center of the world and temples are replicas of the cosmic mountain and hence constitute the pre-eminent 'link' between earth and heaven (Idem:39). The buildings that make up the area are important marker of the sacredness of the space. The buildings here are in complete disarray, however, as a whole they "come around an intersection (Idem:36 )," a prerequisite for a sacred area. The most noted corner on the planet, the most expensive one, one of the most photographed, is the corner of Wall Street and Broad Street, where the tour begins. A chaotic crossroads, Wall Street holds special foundational powers. Eliade reminds us that "it is highly possible that trenches, labyrinths, ramparts, began by being magical defenses designed to repel invasions by demons (Idem:48)." These sites act as the pole in the center of the earth which connects the sacred with the profane, which is the reason for which there are so many skyscrapers in this area. That they are crowned with temples merely shows how these modern columns ensure communication with the sky (Idem:340). The structures in this area are amazing not because of their structural prowess, but because they are impossible to see, as are most things magical. They exist so we know that they are there, and that there is safety in the universe. "the Center of the World is there. . .[where] the light of the Sun falls perpendicularly from Heaven. . . and because the land. . . is more precious than all other countries because it is set at the middle of the world. . . as was the birthplace of Zarathurstra (Idem:40)." The safety of the area is ensured by its clear demarcation from profane sites. The clearest marker in the area is the closed off streets adjacent to the stock exchange due to the bombing of the World Trade Center. Next are marked sidewalks on which visitors follow the tour. Areas are usually separated in relationship to their importance, and therefore the boundaries one crosses to reach the interior of the stock exchange floor and the Federal Reserve are various. The New York Stock Exchange is marked by Heritage Tours; cordoned off with no parking allowed in its perimeter; is carefully guarded not only by security personnel but also by cameras which, curiously enough, are focused only on the tourists lined outside the site; a person dispensing tickets; a winding path around the building guarded by police dogs sniffing packages; a truck with detectors running pizza and sandwich checks; an entrance secured by more guards; a personal metal detector and a property detector; more guards; a tourist tunnel made out of glass; one flight of elevators; a winding display gallery; a balcony overviewing the trade floor; cameras; more security officers; and a plexiglass barrier set in place not because of security, but because a "group of anarchists threw 300 dollars to the trading floor and everyone scrambled to pick them up," thus interrupting the ongoing trade. It is noteworthy that if one comes through the front door, only the street perimeters, a couple of guards, the door, a non-used detector and an elevator wait are impediments to access. The distinctions between protection and enshrinement we have seen thus far are not distinct. Consecration The activity that follows the demarcation of a sacred area is its consecration (MacCannell, 1989:45). Space becomes sacred through ritual transformations. Ritual possession seeks to repeat the cosmogony; the symbolical transformation from a "fluid and larval modality of chaos (Eliade, 1987:31)" into orderly space which is the cosmos. This process emulates the divine act of creation; a process which has been repeated infinitely throughout human history. Enshrining is done by the holders of the shrine as well as the actions of its visitors. An area where man can touch sky, and gain contact with the divine, is an area which is an axis mundi. This "remarkable part of the world (HT:iii)," is clearly in contact with the divine for it has been marked as an axis mundi, aegis of the world. An axis mundi is a "place nearest heaven (Eliade: 39);" a vertical structure which supports the world and ensures communication with the sky since cosmic pillars open the road to the world of the Gods (Idem:34). This explains the reason for finding so many tall buildings in the area, as well as the frenzied desire of each succeeding Wall Street magnate to claim sky high control of the space. Erecting high buildings is the performance of the religious task of "organizing space" in order to establish communication with the gods. It is also a paradigmatic act of divine victory, and as such would thrust its builder into celestial existence and place him above earthly corruption (Idem:59). As narrated in the tour, one after another, several buildings were claimed to be the highest in the world, only to be debunked in as short time as overnight. 40 Wall though it had finally won when its rooftop flagpole topped Chrysler's latest announced 925 feet by two feet more. . . that night, the arch-rival had secretly hoisted through its roof a five-part spire raising its height to 1046 feet, winning the final round of the competition (HT:22) That so many efforts were made to claim the tallest structure in the world does not in any way lessen the religious effect. Quite the contrary, repetition and commemoration are in fact part of the establishment of ritual space; "participants recover the sacred dimension of existence by learning again (Eliade, 1987:90)." The existence of religious space is reinforced by the telling of myths to explain its nature. As seen from the naming phase, the stories of culture heroes are told over and over to justify their super-human activity. From the engagement in the construction of the narrative in a certain way visitors build on the credence of the stories "from this custom, we get our idiom of giving testimony and for that matter ultimately the names of Old and New Testament (Dundes, 1990:206)." Culture heroes do not perform profane acts. The absolute sacrality of their work is recited in order to evoke teophany. Myths, while ordering time and space, also help set the notion of abundance in which human activity takes place. They set the stage for accounts of unlimited power, overflow of divine energy, and surplus of earthly goods. They are the paradigmatic model for certain human activities (Eliade, 1987:97) "this suggests rather that the folk repeatedly insist upon making their version of the lives of heroes follow the lines of a specific series of incidents (Dundes, 1990:190)." The actions of men as John Pierpont Morgan, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Leland Stanford, Edward Harriman, Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller molded against creation myths, become totally justifiable as heroic for they are fixed within the realm of gods. The myth of the hero as retold in the modern terms of the McGuffey readers justify divine re-enactments of uses of power, and also justifies their excesses. The gospel of success so common to nineteenth century boy's education in America molded the idea that successful businessmen were born in poverty while "190 of the topmost American business leaders in the first decade of the twentieth century revealed that poor immigrant and poor farm boys together made up no more than 3 percent of them (Litwack, 1991:441)." Modern Pilgrimage Modern man, experiences the need to engage in activities which propitiate spiritual maturity. This is the objective of going on pilgrimages. Spiritual maturity is attained through rituals which usually require a separation from one's family, travel to ritual space, incorporation to a group which will be instructed on the "secret traditions of a tribe;" ritual acts, and finally the re- incorporation into society. Through ritual initiates experience pre-creation chaos and to suffer change through the experience of re-organization of the world. The revelation of the sacred requires a visit to the unknown, to the dark, to the infernal regions which contain enigmatic objects. The visit to this area includes two contrasting "descents." After following a labyrinthine path and going through the electronic cleansing ritual the visitor is allowed into the stock market viewing area. The guide explains that photographs are not allowed, and the guards reprimand visitors who attempt to take pictures. One is allowed to briefly see this mysterious realm. From a viewer's terrace the initiate witnesses the hurried activity of hundreds of human beings engaged in frenzied activity which illustrates the "larval state of pre-creation chaos (Eliade, 1987:189)." The actions on the floor are unintelligible to the visitors; only basic notions are explained. As plexiglass separates the viewer from the floor the mysteries encoded in secret language are far from comprehension. The experience of unintelligibility is enhanced by loudspeakers blaring in several different languages the brief narratives describing the activities taking place below. The interactive machines along the way in and out of the inner sanctum are just as incomprehensible. They display illuminated codes for the names of the companies traded on the floor. However, how many visitors can actually make any of the 1366 displayed company/cyphers out seems negligible. BAB 1/4. . . . .UCL 1/8. . . . . UNA 1/8. . . . UWW 1 1/8. . . . LFT 2/4, SNM 1, STR nc, BQR 1/4, NFX 2 1/4, GAS. . . NKE. . . WHI. . . WEN. . . UCL. . . LUV. . . STR. . . PXT. . . RMA. . . ECI. . . LFT. . . LUT . . . . . The Big Bang of commerce is fully manifest here. When the market opens every weekday the loudspeaker blares at us "the floor will explode with excitement. . . it is the way of the future (NYSE)." The small gallery before the entrance to the trading floor has several images of the planet Earth suspended in space. . . a sign on the wall spells out divine intent: "the physical world we think we are making improve. . . what evolved for America evolves now for a global market (NYSE)." Sacred space is where the pilgrim experiences the revelation of the sacred: hierophany. The Federal Reserve Bank is different from the Stock Exchange. Instead of a place of chaotic activity it is a space described as "important, intimidating and secure (HT:9)." Here then, great order will be manifest. This site contains "over one quarter of the world's entire know reserves of gold." Its faade, built to look like a banker's palace of the Italian Renaissance, has large concrete bricks adorning its exterior which appear to be modeled out of gold bullion. This building, however, has the same aspect as does the 100 Old Slip building, which initially housed the First Precinct Police station. The entrance to this site containing part of the United States' total holdings of three hundred and fifty billion dollars in gold is almost as cumbersome as was the entrance to the stock exchange, however the entry process is symbolically more extreme. Passage is restricted to booked tours; individuals are not allowed in unless advance reservations are made. Upon entrance visitors must deposit all their possessions in locker spaces in the main lobby and proceed through a metal detector, guards, elevators which need keys to be boarded, a descent into the earth of 80 feet, a maze of corridors and several bolted metal doors, gates, guards, locks to be opened, and vault doors which shut with automatic timers and behind which one would die, should one spend the weekend within their confines. After this long descent one comes upon gates that look onto a room contains approximately 54 cubic feet of gold bullion. Enclosed by iron gates which look just like prison gates, light blue gates of hell, tourists behold the "richest room in the planet (HT:9)." The majesty of this space is bizarrely triumphant; it conveys the feeling of death, stillness, and uselessness of its captive contents. The proximity visitors occupy to the gold bullion is imposing; one stands perhaps an inch of separation from the most sacred of human possessions. However, there is absolutely no way one can come into contact with such riches. The sacred is always untouchable. The descent to this room, is a descent into a "ventral cavity (Eliade, 1987:153)" of the planet, the womb or matrix where pilgrims are to experience religious re-birth through exposure to the divine. Mechanical Reproduction Mechanical reproduction is an important element in the modern sacralization of space. This process duplicates the external appearance of sacred objects in different media in order to aid the bringing of the religious experience to its completion. However, this process can be deceitful, specially in a space that is heavily mediated by those in control. It is dubious that the exposure to bullion behind iron gates does indeed bring human beings into contact with the sacred here. MacCannell tells us that postcards, posters, t-shirts of the object which are made for mass consumption are merely an aid to travellers initiating the quest for the divine. These objects are "most responsible for setting the tourist in motion on his journey to find the true object (MacCannell, 1989:45)," however, the descent to this last repository of riches is where travelers have to come into contact with the The Real Thing (Idem)." Is it possible that a traveller will find The Real Thing here? During religious rituals there are points in the ritual where the differentiation between the sacred and the profane is profoundly blurred, but there is a point where the blurring ends and the absolute religious being makes its presence. The mimetic quality between items representing teophany and objects containing teophany ceases absolutely. Up to this stage in the visit, there has not been any transaction between the divine and the human beings in its presence. The reason being that throughout the visit, contact with real has been heavily mediated. Riches have been photographed and sold to visitors in one dollar posters at the stock exchange; riches have been represented on ticker tape transactions, and flashed onto electronic screens; riches have been spoken about in an introductory video at the NYSE and have been included in every foundational account throughout the narrative. Even in the vaults of the Federal Reserve visitors have seen more riches on the movie screen's flashing images of other Federal Reserve sites in the nation. Ultimately, when exposed to gold behind bars in the "richest room in the planet (TG)," the mediation is so intense that there is no cathartic moment to be experienced. In religious events, there is a point where the initiate ingests, touches, feels, sees, and even speaks for the divine. Symbolic representations end, and the divine manifests itself. REVELATIONS, 3:24:98 It is now three and a half hours into the visit. The elevator doors open on the ground floor at the Federal Reserve and the group begins to disperse. Our tourist guide excuses himself but does not wish to proceed to the small museum built in a room adjacent to the main entrance of the building. He walks away, and several tourists follow him out as they get their belongings from the lockers. Most everyone leaves the building, only two or three visitors stay behind. Permission is granted for a couple to remain in the room and wander around looking at its contents. The rest give up and walk away. We are reminded by the guard that access is restricted-even to the museum- to passers by. This time we can stay even if our guide has left. It is a privilege granted to few as we are told. The man opens a small case with a key and pulls out objects which he tells us "are not regularly given out (FRG)." He passes them out. We are now holding the sacred in our hands. Are we really? We have both received a "brick" a small fist size bundle of shredded paper money. Again, we are told these objects are not regularly given away. They are too precious; they are one thousand dollars that are cut up, shredded, minced into infinitely small pieces of wealth and compressed into bricks. We give thanks for all the things received, and begin to walk away. While doing so I turn my head, and see a small podium and behold the real thing. A gold bullion brick is openly exposed, slowly gyrating in all its magnificence and is within an arm's length. I reach out to touch it. My fingers go right through it. The Wall Street tourist experience is built, as the pediment on the front of the building says on a reflection "on the work of men." However, religious beliefs here are "more than reflections of economic, political and social relationships (Turner, 1972:6)." They are intensely mediated economic narratives of power and ideology. The re-enactment of sacred events establish the possibility of the expression of the divine among men. These re-enactments generate the myth of eternal return; human/divine continuity. However, the myth of eternal return through which space is homologized into cosmic harmony is permeated with profane conformity here. Wall Street "mythology" it is built from narrative forms through which human intervention acquires aberrant dimensions. From the examination of Judaeo-Christian tradition we know that sacred events slowly but steadily incorporate human agency into sacred narratives. Once the acts of gods pertained only to gods, however, supernatural feats ceased to be their monopoly. The supreme act of creation remains province of God, while human events, historical events, slowly become elements of religious accounts as are many legends. Such is the case with the narratives about the Biblical accounts of figures like Moses who might be folklore while Jesus was history or to put it another way, Moses was less human than Jesus (Dundes, 1990:179). The acceptance of contemporary legends/biographies that can be construed as non- historical (Eliade, 1957:180), gives us patterns to follow in the sacralization of human activity, while simultaneously denying history any possibility of being transcendental in positivistic terms. Ideology of this sort avoids social responsibility. Human actions become transhistorical, unjustifiable, and unaccountable to society at large. As tourists, travellers and non scrutinous repeaters of stories, visitors allow these religious narratives to explain the state of the world which if ever seen desacralized becomes terrifying (Idem:109). The coherence of the Wall Street area as a site is due to a narrative which justifies the equating of powerful men as performers of the re-enactments of godly actions in the time of origin. However, historical time is finite, and by participating in the retelling of human acts and gestures as divine there is an intrinsic refusal of scrutiny. The re-enactment is a decline to assume the responsibility of fixing human acts as historical experiences truly in accord with the recognition of the impact that the stock exchange area has on most of the world. Divine actors are unaccountable to human beings since social responsibility does not exist on a cosmic plane. Heroes intrinsically do not act with profanity (Idem:96), therefore sacred actions cannot be aberrant for they reveal absolute truths. As such, the behavior of power elites is allowed erroneously based on a religious vision of life in which the gods, or so called gods, can ensue in excess. They can avoid historical consequences and allow themselves to be led into acts that verge on madness, depravity and crime (Idem:104). The relationships between value and money are subject to shifts in representation. The relationship the viewer has to wealth is obscured by the fact that gold, paper money, and stocks listed on computers at the NYSE collapse the imagery belonging to a deep and complex historical continuum. From Michell Foucault we know that shifts in symbolic representation are bound to knowledge systems which are anchored on changing perceptions of reality while myths, errors, and superstition also surround human understanding. Changes in paradigms are due to the rejection of time-honored knowledge systems. The value given to money as a sign of wealth is subject to the unique episteme in which the relationship appears. The construction of the "locus of simultaneity (Foucault, 1994:166)" between monetary value and the signs that mark its presence are bound to the symbolic notions of a particular era. We must not discount however human agency in the construction of such signs. The signifying processes between metal as a sign for measuring wealth and wealth in itself began in the sixteenth century. Metal possessed the power to signify because it was itself of value (Idem:169). The functions of money in this period depended on its measurability as commodity, and as a substitute in the exchange mechanism. This absolute value is what visitors wish to witness in the vaults of the Federal Exchange. However, the gold there, behind blue prison bars, is a gold which must be carefully guarded and kept away from the masses of tourists. The mediation of this gold modifies the perception of its basic qualities; it alters human perception as its value is accentuated. This gold represents the wealth of many nations, of many men. During the seventeenth century, the mark of wealth of metal was reversed. The value of coinage no longer rested on the fine metals which composed it. "It is the exchange function which serves [then] as the foundation of the qualities and value of money (Idem:178)." The transactional quality of money--its capacity of action--is what gives it its worth. Value is performed. There is no internal connection between the signal and the meaning: "gold is precious because it is money--not the converse (Idem:176)." The immutability of gold is no longer the privilege which gives it a value above other metals. Its value now rests on the arbitrary conveyance of meaning/wealth where any object, even one which has no price, can serve as money (Idem:176). The collapse between material reality and symbolic representation led to money becoming material memory, a self-duplicating representation, a deferred exchange; the metaphysical converse of consciousness (Idem:209 my emphasis). Mechanically reproduced paper money enters at this representational stage. Its shredding merely shows its vulnerability as symbol. The hologram in the museum at the Federal Reserve is a highly sophisticated representation of value abused and thrust into a discursive realm in which there is no coordination "between the conjugation of bodies and the concatenation of reasons (Idem:209)." Elision of the real object in this monetary environment illustrates how money is mediated in an era in which libertinage is "the obscure and repeated violence of desire battering at the limits of representation (Idem:210)." Most decidedly the "locus of simultaneity," of absolute value has been dissolved. From the examination of the transmutability of the value invested in monetary signs; ticker tapes, flashing lights, computer listings, gold bullion, and holographic representations we find that money appears in this site from its basic value to its most extreme form: its virtual existence/non-existence. It is money become performance. The World Puts Its Stock In Us. Religious beliefs and practices are more than reflections of economic, political and social relationships (Turner, 1969:6)," they are also the result of ideological control. Thought control is a "social rather than an individual phenomenon (Nader, 1983:2)," which includes brainwashing, conversion and related behaviors which are underlined by shared illusions of invulnerability, over-optimism, self-censorship, unanimity and a stereotyped view of the opposition (Janis qtd in Nader, 1983:2). Traditional religious beliefs in our "desacralized" society have been replaced by groupthink notions of progress, happiness, and economic well being. As these notions have become ingrained in the understanding of economic and social institutions. "What we see depends on what we know (Nader, 1983:2)," hegemony and its sacralization is accepted as it is deemed normal to the functioning of society. The Wall Street site visit as a site enshrined is representative of intense operation of controlling processes. Ideological control is manifest in this site not only in the signs and symbols of wealth displayed on the streets and in buildings of the area. The ritualistic behavior of the guides and the public reify the dogma of economic progress which is out of touch with the realities of a working class and the product of their work. Tourism is a working class phenomenon. "The alienation of the worker stops where the alienation of the sightseer begins (MacCannell, 1989:6)." At Wall Street the phenomenon comes full cycle. The process is so pervasive that even when the tour guides are Ph.D. students from Columbia, Princeton and New York University there is no free interpretation of the site. The path of the tour is taught to newly hired guides via the repetition of tropes which annul any personal analysis. (Curiously enough the management didn't mention any New School For Social Research students among their staff!) Apathy was also quite apparent among the visitors to the site. Handouts with a list of the 300 most important Wall Street Companies were taken by visitors, curled up and thrown away without inspection. Queries by the guides as to additional questions by tourists consistently met with absolute silence throughout most of the tour. The interactive computer stations, which are decidedly at a low ratioof visitor to machine of approximately 4:150, are not used. Commodity fetishism is an effect in which contact is displaced from people onto commodities "and is intensified to the point of spectrality towards the commodity as autonomous entity (Taussig, 1990:22)." A visit to Wall Street reveals "values at their deepest level (Wilson qtd. in Taussig:6)," and the absence of such values. However, absence of value is not to be read as "a spectacle so trite it does not aspire to create meaning (Adorno qtd. in Taussig:35)." The meaning of work, labor relations, and money here at NYSE, "a nonprofit organization (TG)," and the Wall Street area is a spectacle of cognitive dissonance. With these concepts in mind, the following well known phrase which shook this century acquires new resonance. "The worker exchanges with capital his labor itself. . . he alienates it. The price he receives is the value of this alienation." Yes, Mr. Marx, alienation indeed. Bibliography Dundes, Alan 1990 "The Hero Pattern and the Life of Jesus." In Quest of the Hero by Otto Rank, Lord Ranglan and Alan Dundes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Eliade, Mircea 1987 The Sacred and the Profane. [1957]. New York; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Foucault, Michel 1994 The Order of Things. [1994]. New York: Vintage Books. Gennep, Arnold van 1969 The Rites of Passage. [1906]. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Heritage Tours 1995 "Downtown at Your Feet.." Pamphlet. New York: Heritage Trails, Inc. Litwack, Leon F. and Winthrop D. Jordan 1991 The United States: Becoming a World Power. [1957]. New York: Prentice Hall. MacCannell, Dean 1989 The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Schocken. Malinowski, Bronislaw 1954 Magic, Science and Religion. [1948]. New York: Doubleday. Marx, Karl 1973 Capital: A Critique of Political Economy. [1867]. New York: The Modern Library. Nader, Laura 1997 "Controlling Processes: Tracing the Dynamic Components of Power." In Current Anthropology. Vol. 38 Nr. 5, December. New York Stock Exchange 1998 Gallery Space. New York City, New York. Segal, Robert A. 1990 "Introduction: In Quest of the Hero." In Quest of the Hero by Otto Rank, Lord Ranglan and Alan Dundes. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Taussig, Michael 1993 Mimesis and Alterity: A particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. Turner, Victor 1972 The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure.. [1969]. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Works Progress Administration 1992 The WPA Guide to New York City. [1939] New York: The New Press. Participant Abbreviations HT Heritage Tours Guide Book TG Heritage Tours Guide FRG Federal Reserve Guide NYSE Stock Exchange Gallery Labelling and Video.